Posts by Magilla

Sportcopter is moving in a different direction

Sportcopter have designs on the Flying Car market, and appear to be testing prototypes based on gyroplanes. While gyroplanes need a runway (or a 25mph headwind) to take off, they can land virtually vertically.

Here's a link to a slideshow of designs and photos: http://www.sportcopter.com/FlyingCar/tabid/174/Default.aspx

Maybe it works!

Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, has the most notorious Red Light District on the Western side of Australia, and for the last week, has been rocked by daily earthquakes, from multiple epicentres - measuring from 2 to 5.8 on the Richter scale.

The Happening

So the REAL story isn't that plants are trying to kill us - what's actually happening is that with the onset of global warming, we'll be forced to live closer and closer to the poles where it's cooler, where we will eventually all just kill ourselves, thus solving the problem.

Fact checking?

"There aren't many application updates for this round of Ubuntu. The newer Basero CD/DVD authoring tool sees an update, but stalwarts such as OpenOffice, GIMP 2.6, and Firefox have seen no major updates since Ubuntu 8.10."

Point of order: according to Canonical punts Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/20/ubuntu_9_04_released/),

"The Linux stack also includes support for the OpenOffice 3.0 office application suite, which didn't make it into the Ubuntu 8.10 release last fall."

And before any of you smartasses say "that says SUPPORTED, not INCLUDED", this from the horses mouth:

"Ubuntu 9.04 features OpenOffice.org 3.0. This gives users a complete office suite that is entirely compatible with Microsoft Office. This free office software provides an immediate saving of at least $200 for users who need to create presentations, write documents or manage spreadsheets at work or at home."

Atheism

Unfortunately, the idea of atheism has been watered down somewhat over the years. True atheism is not "I don't want to believe that there's a God", which is about the bounds of what most self-professed atheists reach.

A /real/ atheist is a scholar not only of Christianity, but of all deity-based religions, who, after careful study, has come to the conclusion that there is no God.

Simply saying "there is no God" from a position of complete ignorance is lazy and stupid.

English: do you speak it?

"This will be firmware to fix the firmware (SD1A) that was issued to fix the firmware (SD15) that caused some 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 drives and others to stop working. The SD1A firmware caused 500GB Barracuda 7200.11s to stop working."

A little disappointed...

MS profit may be higher...

... but lets not forget that they probably ship 10x as many units to actually /get/ that profit. Which means that they make far less per item than Apple. They sell 1 Windows licence for nearly every computer sold. Then have a look at what percentage of people buy Office as well. And how many people have MS mouses, keyboards, consoles and games?

Waitaminute...

Where below is the "more on this"? It's something I was actually interested in hearing about. That's just like people who (a) start ordered lists when they are speaking, but only make one point.

"...a Xen-compatible hypervisor that many suspect is itself heavily based on Xen if not simply Xen in Windows drag. (You decompile the code and get sued by Microsoft to prove it - I'll write the story.)"

Sounds like a job for us Aussies. According to one of my law lecturers, EULAs are invalid here, and that's the only thing that says you can't decompile / reverse engineer / modify etc etc etc

The answers you've been looking for:

Re: Now if only... (daniel)

vi is extremely fast, if you know how to use it. If you don't, there are plenty of other options, such as pico/nano.

And if compiling and dependencies are not your thing, use yum (RedHat-based distros), apt (Debian-based distros), emerge (gentoo-based distros) or YaST (SuSE-based distros) - all of which do a pretty good job of working it out for you.

Re:Just works? (Pete)

Pete, mate - you'll notice that the article states that this is a "beta" release. This is the software codeword for "we haven't finished development yet". The idea being that they can get feedback and make improvements before the official release.

Of course, were this actually "google OS" rather than "good OS", I wouldn't be expecting it to come out of beta for a very long time...

Re: PC LOAD LETTER!?!? (Temp)

Australia FTW

Not only do we have between 7 and 10 of the top 10 worlds deadliest snakes (depending on ranking system), we also have two of the 3 worlds most toxic creatures - the box jellyfish and the blue-ringed octopus. The third is either the cone shell or Ms. Spears (still up for debate).

Add sharks, crocs, spiders, other snakes, and a variety of other bits and pieces, what's not to like?

When everyone idolises hammers...

Re: @ Leo Maxwell (By Trevor Watt)

Firstly, ever heard of a cover band? If not, they are bands who play other peoples songs, often get paid for it, but don't pay royalties. In effect, there are your cheap MFIkea knock-offs.

Secondly, if Leo discovers that his design of chair is a hit, he can't just bung it on the photocopier to make more. It takes more skill, time, materials, and tools. He can't send the original away and get back a box a week later with 2000 more in it that are exactly the same. Every time he sells a chair, it represents more investment is what he does.

Musical artists, on the other hand, can spend a year writing an album, two weeks recording it, and then will get money every time a copy is sold for the rest of their lives.

I have spent two hours today writing code that could be used for the next five years or more. It's a creative, if not artistic work. I will get paid for two hours labour for it, and not a penny more. If that code is still running in 5 years, or has been shared with other companies worldwide, I won't get a cent more for it.

But but but...

Re: Why is John (Post 12/10/2007 @ 03:50 GMT) a complete cretin?

No browser is perfect, for sure - it's just that Internet Explorer is the least secure and least standards-compliant major web browser available. With out a doubt, the BEST ways to stop getting crapware from web pages are to (a) swap to *nix/*BSD/Apple or (b) swap to Firefox or Opera.

Remember:

1) Anti-[virus|crapware|malware|adware] makers are ALWAYS behind the ball. You can't make a fix for something until you find it, and you don't find it 'til it's in the wild, infecting computers. Prevention is better than cure.

2) Anti-[virus|crapware|malware|adware] makers don't always remove ALL traces of any given infection. Over time, Windows gets bogged down with all sorts of traces of crap, and this issue just adds to it. Prevention is better than cure.

3) No Anti-[virus|crapware|malware|adware] package is comprehensive. Most moderate infections require the use of 3-5 different scanner/removers, and then a final tidy-up by hand to get a machine clean. This can take up to a week to complete. Prevention is better than cure.

Simon, I honestly don't care if you decide to use IE for the rest of your life, and hang the consequences*. I, however, will continue to use Firefox, and browse [virus|crapware|malware|adware] free, and advertisement-free as well.

I recommend that everyone else do the same.

*Consequences that could be severe and unforgiving, given the rate that IE tends to pick up nasties. I hope you don't net-bank. Really.